


Brugmansia versicolor

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Dom/sub Undertones, Ink Play, Love, M/M, Power Dynamics, Seduction, Sexual Tension, is that even a thing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Harry has finally had enough of being ignored for the sake of Tom's work, and now he's going to do something about it.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 9
Kudos: 270





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is nauseatingly self-indulgent, so apologies.

Harry watched Tom sitting at his desk, working. Despite the loud creak of the door when he’d come in, Tom appeared not to have noticed his presences and so remained writing, even whilst the door to his study hung open, and Harry lingered in the space like a spectre might. 

Tom was currently writing some report, quite intently, just as he had been for a week now, all on the same subject matter no doubt. His head was bent forwards and the quill scratched at the parchment, and every couple of lines, he paused momentarily to dip the nib back into the vial of black ink sitting beside him. Behind him, was the window and the view of their small garden; it faced westward and right now the sun was casting a fruitful sky, with streaks of peachy pink and clouds the colour of nectarines. 

Those colours bled into the room too, and the Russian green of the walls was softened to a sage. Tom himself was outlined in black, a precise shape that stood bold against the permeating gold of the sun. Though the exact expression of his face was hardly visible in the gloom and was instead swathed in such shadows; they were the sort of secret shadows that wouldn’t suit anyone else. 

For they didn’t have the intensity of personality to sustain the foundations and thus, allow the composition above lacked the fortitude to contain such vagaries.

All the same, like this he looked almost lovely; all the sharp edges smoothed away like a stone’s surface after being tossed on the ocean’s waves, and all his apices sanded down to a gentle, pleasing, curve. Harry sighed, sometimes it physically hurt to look at Tom for long periods of time, perhaps, it was all the emotions that he unknowingly dragged from Harry’s heart until it throbbed, and from his lungs, until they stung.

Or perhaps, it was simpler than that. Maybe, it merely because Tom’s entire being emanated a strain of magic that was as hypnotic as it was painful, rather like melted chocolate with grains of glass speckled through. More than one person had been physically repulsed by the feel of it on their skin, others were spellbound, and Harry sat somewhere in the middle. To him, it was entrancing and even soothing when Tom was in a good mood, but when he wasn’t, or he was simply too distracted in his own consciousness which tended to be murky at the best of times, it became prickly and almost brusque against his skin.

Currently, it was veering towards the brusquer end of the scale, and Harry could feel it scratching at his wrists, and his neck because, however good, Tom was at hiding his thoughts behind layer upon layer of cerebral fortification, and hiding his emotions behind an endless supply of blank masks, he didn’t paid the same level of attention to his own physicality.

Probably, knowing Tom as he did, the oversight was one of hubris; this strange belief that his emotions did not present themselves into the physical world, either by his body language or by the texture of his magic.

But they did, and Harry had become rather adept at reading them. 

Right now, for instance, there was a superficial silkiness that lapped softly at his skin like gentle waves, but the scratchy undertone was still undeniable, to continue the metaphor, it was like sand and small stones hidden beneath the waves’ foam. Harry shifted, still not making noise, but the movement alone surely should have alerted Tom to his presences. 

Nevertheless, Tom still didn’t react, and in his inattentiveness, Harry began to feel marginally uncomfortable. Somehow, this felt like a violation; an invasion of sorts into Tom’s perfectly curated, if somewhat high-stress, gold-glazed environment.

Harry swallowed and continued to shift his weight again from one foot to the other. He could go now and pretend that none of this had ever happened. But he didn’t. Rather he found himself still standing there, still watching with the utmost fascination at Tom, when he had a couple of his defences down.

In the grand scheme of things, Tom was not particularly vulnerable in this moment, and Harry was sure that if he tried anything untoward, the reaction would likely be automatic and, somewhat, violent. But still, the sleek surface of his magic was coming from some part of him, and that part was likely the marginal reduction in the sheer quantity of defence mechanisms he usually employed.

For all his virtues, Tom could be paranoid sometimes. 

Though right now, his world appeared audaciously simple in design, and he sat at the heart of it; relaxed in a way that, despite living together, Harry was rarely allowed to see. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, and the firm line of his collarbone was illuminated by the dull desk lamp, there was no sign of his tie or his jacket. And even the way he was sitting was different to usual, for starters, his fingers did not hold the tension they usually would when he was working repetitively, and likewise, his back had taken on a lazy curve, as opposed to its usual washboard straightness. 

He looked… simply inhuman. A figure sated on the sun; its tendrils wound around his fingers as they tapped lightly on the surface of the wood, and a languid ease seeping through the rest of his limbs. He was even taking his time with writing letting the loops dip lower on the page, and the elegant twirls become increasingly elaborate. This was Tom in his most natural state. 

Harry swallowed again; Tom just looked so… _good_ when he relaxed, even if it was only a little. He should do it more often. Though, maybe it’s brilliance was simply because it was such a rare occurrence, because most of the time Tom was pulled tighter than tight like he was a bundle of wires knotted together by fastidious fingers. Every action was usually constructed, and every emotional response orchestrated to an almost unhealthy degree. And whether by conscious choice, or subconscious design, such a lifestyle preferred endless dimness, and stress, and limited interaction with anyone else. 

Unfortunately, that was currently including Harry. 

In spite of the fact they shared a house, and not a particularly big one at that, Harry had barely seen Tom all week, much less managed a meaningful conversation with him. The ignoring was starting to grate on his nerves, and Harry was quite sure that soon it would breed resentment if not dealt with appropriately and reasonably soon, and he didn’t want to resent Tom. 

Especially, if such resentment would also go unnoticed. 

“I know you’re there,” said Tom suddenly, though he didn’t look up, or make any other acknowledgement of Harry’s existence; just a few simple words that made Harry shift again and resting his hand on the doorframe. “What is it?” Tom continued, in the silence that Harry hadn’t filled. 

“You’ve been ignoring me,” Harry said quietly, gripping a little harder at the doorframe; picking at the old wood and running his nails through the grooves, letting the wood dust that had collected drop and disperse into the air. They both silently watched the particles, illumined by the sun, floated down to be lost forever on the floorboards. 

Tom continued to watch the air even when the dust had gone, “well, I’ve been working,” he said, still writing, or at least, moving his hand in the motion of writing, though the nib had run out of ink. “As you know,” he added, dipping the quill again and getting back to his half-formed sentence. Apparently, that was supposed to signal the end of the conversation, regardless of nothing having actually been solved. 

Harry sighed. It was this sort of behaviour that had motivated him to move in with Tom far earlier than everyone had thought was appropriate, because, despite Tom’s undeniable brilliance in the vicious fields of politics and academia, he was painfully inept at _real_ life. And having to deal with that ineptitude at a physical distance was unworkable. There had been weeks of utter silence for no particular reason, other than Tom was busy on some project or other that completely consumed his entire existence. Couple that with his tendency not to eat when he was preoccupied, and to neglect sleep, and almost all human contact, really meant that it was a surprise that Tom had managed to survive over two decades without collapsing in on himself like a dying star. 

“You work too much.”

Tom just hummed an objection. Although, Harry knew he heard it because he’d stopped writing, only for a second; someone who didn’t know him might well have mistaken it for a natural pause. But when Tom was focused, he didn’t need to pause. So, he’d heard, and apparently, disagreed with the criticism of his habits. Nevertheless, he continued writing.

Ever so carefully, so that Tom would barely notice his movement, even in his periphery, Harry shifted over to the other side of the doorframe. He leaned his weight on the door itself and made its hinges creak as he swung it back and forth and back again. The quiet squeak, accompanied by the scraping against the floorboards from where they had warped a long time ago, was undeniably annoying.

Tom lasted less than a minute.

“Could you stop that?” he said, a poisonous spike in his words that was matched by an equal spike up of irritation in his magic. A sudden barb that would have caught Harry by surprise, if he hadn’t felt it a hundred times before, pretty much every time Tom experienced a minor discomfort within a reasonable proximity. 

“Maybe?” Harry replied, making no effort to stop the creaking or the squeaking or the scratching, after all, it was about time that Tom had his needs neglected too. When there was no immediate effect, Harry put more of his weight on the door, making scraping last longer and sound harsher, as though it were leaving behind a long, indented, streak across the floor. 

“Fine,” Tom snapped, less than thirty seconds later, “what do you want, Harry?” The terse tone was entirely unmistakable now, and most people would start to back away for fear of inflaming it further. But not Harry, he had too much invested in this excursion to do that. 

Slowly, Harry peeled himself off the door and walked the couple of steps firmly into the room. Beneath his feet, the floorboards groaned, and the sun wrapped its golden arms around him, providing a warmth to heat the cold that had settled in his stomach. Tom watched him, scrutinising each step.

He placed his hands down onto the edge of Tom’s desk; his face was still caught in the sun, and thus became the inverse of Tom’s, bright where his was shadowed, and careless where he was cautious. “I want you to stop working, and pay attention to me,” Harry said carefully, as though this were political negotiation because that was the language Tom understood best.

It was Tom’s turn to sigh and roll his eyes, “and if I don’t?” he said. 

“You will.”

With a casual, condescending, and somewhat dismissive smile, Tom hummed amusedly and looked back down at his recently written sentence, probably trying to remember what he was going to say next. “Maybe later,” he said. 

Almost without thinking, Harry slapped his hand down on Tom’s freshly written words, blurring the ink and feeling its wetness seeping into his skin, “I think you misunderstand me, Tom,” he said firmly and with far more confidence than he actually felt, “I want your attention _now_.”

Slowly, and unnervingly calmly, Tom looked up, his eyes dragging from Harry’s fingers, along his arm and finally up to his face. He sat back in his chair, eyebrows raised, and his arms crossed; the fingers on his right hand tapped against his left arm firmly and deliberately, as though he were a teacher trying to decide punishment he wanted to enact on a student for a minor, but annoying, transgression. 

“Is that so?” he said eventually, “and what exactly makes you think that I’ll give you my attention?”

Harry was tempted to quip that he already had Tom’s undivided attention, but that could lead down a whole other rabbit hole that he was underprepared for, and if he’d learnt anything from living with Tom, it was not to start an argument unless you’d done your research. So, instead, Harry settled with something less contentious. “I’ll make you,” he said simply. 

Tom smiled at that; he still looked unconvinced, “go on then,” he said, an unmistakable challenged infused into his tone; a sourness that would have suited lemon tea. He paused for a moment, and checked his watch, “you have fifteen minutes to convince me, Harry, and if you can’t, then you’re going to leave me to work, aren’t you?”

“That’s not fair,” Harry started.

But Tom interrupted him, “oh, Harry,” he said, reaching forward for the clock on his desk and starting to set the alarm for fifteen minutes time, “who said anything about fairness?”


	2. Chapter 2

It had been less than thirty seconds before Tom was getting defensive. “What are you doing?” he asked, shifting slightly, and keeping his eyes fixed on Harry because he had always had trust issues, and always seemed to think that everyone’s every action had predatory motivations. Sometimes it made Harry wonder what had happened to him in the past to provoke such defensive responses to absolutely everything. 

But that was certainly a conversation for another day; one to be had in a more public location, where Tom couldn’t avoid the answers simply by walking into a different room and locking the door with stronger magic than Harry had ever felt it necessary to use. 

“I’m having a proper look at you,” Harry said softly, and it was a truthful response. He so rarely got a proper opportunity to look at Tom these days that fifteen minutes felt like a decadent luxury. Fifteen whole minutes of Tom doing nothing but being watched; perhaps, he’d finally understand just how much Harry _liked_ to watch him.

So, he continued to walk around Tom’s desk, and then his chair, dipping in and out of the sun, depending on the contours of the room; his shadow flaring up and spilling about across the room every few steps. Though the walk was so slow that it could hardly be called a walk at all, more a relaxed, lengthy, pacing, one that was obviously already getting to Tom. For someone who so profoundly liked to be the centre of attention, he had far more apprehensions about being the powerless one in any situation.

And Harry could feel in the air, this abrasiveness that radiated from Tom, even as he leaned forward and began to fiddle with his quill. “I thought you were going to try and convince me?” Tom continued, though now there was an edge of uncertainty to his tone, and he was shifting again, uncrossing and crossing his legs, and all the while spinning the quill between his fingers. 

“Not everything has to be rushed,” said Harry, coming up behind him and blocking the sun’s glimmer again. This time, his shadow was cast up onto the opposite wall; this dark, elongated figure that Tom watched with a continued suspicion. 

“Yes,” Tom said slowly, “but time is rather of-the-essence for you, wouldn’t you say?” 

Harry found himself grinning, it had been too long since he’d engaged with Tom in any sort of conversation, least of all, one as tantalising as this. It made his heartbeat spike up, and pleasant heat begin to diffuse through his stomach. “A lot can be achieved in fifteen minutes,” he said softly, bringing his hand down to lightly brush against Tom’s shoulder, adding no more pressure than the stroking away of a hair might require, but still Tom tensed a little. 

“You should know that, Tom,” he continued, his fingers running along the bone of his shoulder before lingering a couple of seconds too long at the base of his neck, making Tom tense a little more. Though it came from his core rather than his shoulders like he was trying to remain perfectly still, almost statuesque, but failing miserably at it. 

“Should I?” he murmured, moving his head minutely to accommodate Harry’s fingers as they drifted higher up his neck, sliding over the tendons that lay beneath the skin, fingers splayed out rather like a climbing hydrangea or a honeysuckle in July. As Harry’s fingers continued to wander, they left behind the faintest smudges of ink; just black, half-formed, fingerprints impressed into Tom’s skin. 

He wondered if Tom could feel them; if that was the reason that he tilted his neck a little further to the left in such a way that was reminiscent of a contented housecat having its muzzle stroked. They should really get a cat and complete this cycle of domesticity they’d both fallen so pleasantly into.

But once again, Harry was getting distracted, and, as good as it was to take it slow, it was not advisable to deviate significantly. “Because, Tom,” he said instead, continuing the conversation, “you’ve employed it enough yourself.” He paused, rubbing his thumb back and forth over a section of skin that made Tom shudder. “In fact, I seem to remember you’ve made scheduled itineraries for even ten-minute timespans.”

“There’s no harm in being prepared,” said Tom softy, not taking an offence to the words, which was good because no offence had been meant by them.

“And no harm with going with the flow either,” Harry murmured back, taking a couple more steps behind Tom, the sound of which punctuated the silence rather like the tapping of a glass at a party. With the same carefulness as before, Harry slid his hand from Tom’s shoulder, and instead, raised it up to skim along his jaw, leaving behind another long glide of dark ink across the bone.

This time, Tom didn’t tense, if anything, he relaxed. It was such a small movement that most people would simply have missed it, for it was no more than the slightest slackening of his muscles accompanied by the softest of exhales and a momentary flutter of his eyes. 

Harry didn’t miss it. 

In fact, he found himself smiling at that expression because, from this angle, Tom truly did look vulnerable. Not in a physical sort of way, as Harry didn’t doubt that should he behave genuinely unexpectedly, Tom would react… badly to say the least. But there was still an _emotional_ vulnerability of sorts, as though he were a flower just starting to open its petals, and it was an honour to be a party to the reveal. 

Harry swallowed and dropped his hand away from Tom’s neck. He finished his pacing a little quicker and slid into the space between Tom and the desk, making him shift his chair back an inch or two. They were still close though, Harry noted that as he perched himself on the very edge of the wood and watched how Tom shifted under his gaze. His movements weren’t necessarily out of discomfort though, more uneasiness at what was going to happen, maybe even a smattering of apprehension, and, Harry liked to think he could see too a trace of anticipation buried deep in Tom’s eyes. 

They had, after all, fallen in love for a reason. This wasn’t one of those cold associations built up from purely physical foundations, nor was it a relationship fabricated on sentiments that were waning like blossom in a frost. Rather, their feelings were deeper than all that, and they wound around each other like ivy does through trees, and maybe Tom wasn’t good at expressing feelings… traditionally, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. 

Harry continued to watch him, taking in each line of his face; each angle and each curve, all better than the last. There was something undeniably classical about Tom’s face, and it was gorgeous at the best of times, and only more so when all his features were glazed with a charcoal gloom and speckled with shadows. 

“Are you convinced yet?” Harry asked quietly, he didn’t particularly expect an affirmative response, after all, they were only five minutes into this endeavour, but still, it would be nice to contrast the reaction to the one that Tom was going to have to give later. 

“No,” said Tom sharply, and, in a way, boredly, as thought, this was all very amusing, but he had other, more important, tasks that he could be completing. 

Harry nodded and slid off the desk so that he was standing iniquitously close to Tom, close enough that he could run his fingers over his shoulders, or his hands down his thighs. Tom seemed to realise the distance too because he was watching more carefully, his eyes fixed on Harry’s hands, as though he expected them to do something wicked. It was sweet to see his suspicions, and even sweeter to see Tom’s mind whirring away, trying to keep afloat and stay one step ahead. 

He should have learnt by now that, when it came to love, Harry would always be a step or two ahead. 

As slowly as he could, Harry rolled his shoulders and raised a hand to rub at an imagined soreness on the nape of his neck. He knew, even without looking, that he was not as elegant or as refined as Tom was when he decided to display himself, shamelessly sometimes. But Tom wasn’t interested in elegance or refinement, he had enough of that infused into his own being. Rather, Tom was quite attached to all the awkwardness Harry usually exuded, and the ungainliness that was embedded into him.

So, without so much care for dignity, Harry stepped that last pace forward and climbed into Tom’s lap, spreading himself across Tom’s thighs and smiling, openly this time, when Tom unexpectedly jolted hard enough that Harry placed a hand on the base of Tom’s neck to steady himself. “My, Tom, you’re jittery, aren’t you?” he said, knowing that the tone was a tad more playful than he had initially intended.

But Tom didn’t seem to mind. He just stayed silent, mind humming and his magic softening around them, oozing into the cracks as though it were a physical, viscous, thing. Harry wondered briefly whether Tom could feel a change in Harry’s magic too. He couldn’t himself because it was always difficult to feel your own magic, simply because you’re the only one who’s truly accustomed to it. But Tom had always said Harry’s felt so velvety on his skin, with only the occasional abrading undercurrent. Was that what it had felt like when he’d first come in? Did it chafe at Tom’s skin until he paid him attention?

Answers to those questions weren’t necessary now though, Harry would ask them later when they were lying on the sofa together, Tom’s hands in his hair, murmuring to him the sweet little daydreams that his mind had concocted, because that was exactly what he intended them to do later; no distractions at all, just the two of them, together, all evening. 

For now though, Harry refocussed his gaze wandering to how Tom was examining the knit of his jumper, probably assessing the texture, and trying to work out how each thread was supposed to go together. Looking at unnecessary details was something Tom always did when he wanted to be distracted. Though, despite his apparent desire for distraction, his hands still came to rest on Harry’s waist, pushing lightly into the wool and feeling the body that lay beneath. 

“No,” Harry said slowly, “you don’t get to touch me.” Somehow, even though those words contained nothing _untoward_ in their meaning, Harry’s heart still thumped to say them. Perhaps, it was the power rush of denying Tom some small thing that he wanted that got the adrenaline curling through each blood vessel; the realisation that with a few simple words he could neglect Tom’s interests just as easily as Tom had neglected his. 

“Excuse me?” Tom said, the slightest sound of irritation spilling off his tongue, which was evidence enough that, however much he wanted to deny it, this was, in a small way, getting to him. He didn’t immediately remove his hands, but nor did he attempt to move them either. They just stayed resting on Harry’s waist.

Harry just leaned in closer, crowding out the space between them and increasing his grip on the back of Tom’s neck. The skin was warm on his fingers, heated by the balmy beams of lazy sunlight that still drifted through the window. Tom shifted against him; his hips moving nearly involuntarily as the warmth of another person’s body so close, began to get to him. 

“You didn’t want to pay me any attention,” Harry murmured, his mouth grazing close enough to Tom’s that he’d be able to feel the heat of every word, “so you don’t get to touch until you admit that you made a mistake, alright?”

Even as they left his mouth, the words felt too sweet, almost artificially so, and Harry waited anxiously to see if they had their intended effect, or whether Tom would simply cock an eyebrow and hum in nonchalant compliance, or worse, not comply at all.

But Tom dipped his head, in a poor attempted to hide the smile, and quickly dropped his hands away in acquiescence. “As you wish,” he murmured, soft and low, but still with a tinge of rigidity suffused between the letters, as he raised his head again and let his eyes trace around Harry’s lips. It was clear that he was willing to submit to the limitation _only_ because Harry was the one who instigated it. 

At that Harry smiled and ran his hand out from Tom’s neck and down to the collar of his shirt, feeling the material’s roughness between his thumb and index finger. “I like it when you do what I want,” Harry said softly, still rubbing his fingers over the collar, pulling it as he did so, and ignoring how he turned the pristine white of the fabric to a dirty grey, and somehow it felt like it metaphor for their increasingly decadent morality. Harry swallowed, “I really like it,” he murmured against Tom’s ear, “you know why?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, which was probably good because Tom was sitting there, still and far too tense. The edge of his neck was chafed from where Harry had been pulling at the collar, a pale raw red line buried into the skin; just black ink and red marks spliced together like a roulette wheel. He looked so pretty like this, and Harry pressed himself even closer until his mouth grazed over Tom’s ear.

“Because it turns me on, Tom.”

There was no mistaking the irregularity in Tom’s inhale, it was too short and uneven and somehow taut. To give him credit though, he didn’t come apart at the seams as Harry had secretly hoped he might. Instead, Tom licked his lips again taking his time, before turning to face Harry with those eyes that never gave anything away, even if the rest of him revealed his emotional response as easily as if it were written down for consumption alone. 

“Are you convinced yet?” Harry murmured again, now moving his own hips; just a slow, leisurely grinding in the guise of getting comfortable, and at the same time leaning both his arms over Tom’s shoulder and rubbing lazily at the back of his neck

Tom squirmed at that, no matter how hard he was pretended that he hadn’t. “No,” he said, though the words were tighter than before and a little too controlled in their pronunciation to be, in any way, natural, “I’m not.”

“I’ll have to try harder then, won’t I?” Harry said against his ear again, his lips brushing, ever so lightly, over the skin and delighting in the way that Tom shivered. His hands moved from the specificity of the collar, down to the parting at Tom’s throat. The skin there was pretty; smooth and shadowed and… _sensitive_ if past precedent was anything to go by. 

The faintest flicker of an idea filled his head. 

Reaching behind him, Harry grabbed the inkwell off the desk. He ran his fingers around the rim – scraping the wet ink off the sides until it stained his skin. Tom was still watching his every move, though now his gaze was darting uncertainly between Harry’s face and the ink on his fingers, and Harry was sure that his heart must have been humming with that same anticipation as before. 

The ink was cool, and Tom retracted an inch or so when Harry first dapped his wetted fingers onto his neck. Darkening the fingerprints that were already there, and making a whole myriad of new ones, and sharp and real as water lilies spread across a pond. He felt Tom swallow, his throat dipping in such an elegant way. In a much less graceful fashion, Harry continued his fingerprint trail over Tom’s neck, and down the collar of his shirt. Dark, black spots that stood out so stark against the crisp white of the fabric. “This was a new shirt,” Tom murmured, though his hands continued to remain firmly by his sides, and he didn’t look like he wanted Harry to stop even for a second. 

“You can always buy another one,” said Harry, moving his hands a little less precisely and leaving behind great blotches of ink over the fabric. The colour leached out sometimes, when the material became saturated and left dark black marks like bruises, or, more wholesomely, like the stains of blackberries crushed against palms when they’re picked. It continued like that until Harry couldn’t resist adding a little more, dipping his fingers into the inkwell and watching the liquid shine in the sun before dripping, sliding over Tom’s skin and pooling in the hollows.

“You’re making a mess,” Tom said, though the steadiness was interrupted by a shake affecting the syllables and he was no longer looking Harry in the eye. Instead, his gaze was directed down and little to the left, probably on the stale cup of tea being reheated by the sun.

“That’s because I like it when you look a mess,” he said, raising his non-inked hand to Tom’s hair, and running his fingers through the curls, pulling them out of their perfect coiffure and, instead, creating a look that could only be described as dishevelled. But dishevelment suited Tom just as much as inordinate perfection did.

But what he was wearing wasn’t quite true dishevelment because… Harry’s fingers drifted to the first button still done-up on Tom’s shirt. True dishevelment would involve that shirt being undone, and Tom’s hair being even more in his eyes, and maybe his breathing being a little more ragged at the edges, but he had limited time, three to four minutes at best, and he needed to hurry things along a little quicker. With a smile, Harry tilted his neck to the side and pushed at the button through the hole.

One button was undone.

Then two.

Then three 

Harry ran his thumb down the exposed strip of skin, still leaving behind an inky streak. Tom licked his lips again and didn’t move, at least, he didn’t _consciously_ move, but there was no denying how he was constantly shifting like there were tectonic plates under his skin. Every touch, no matter how small or innocent, made him shift or shiver or shudder.

In addition, his eyes kept shutting for a good few seconds at a time, as though Tom was trying to get his bearing in all this, but then when they opened, they were darker than dark. This shade that Harry barely thought was possible to exist; just an endless black, its gloss interrupted only with a few spikes of mulberry red right near the centre. 

This was the side of Tom he didn’t get to see enough; the side that wasn’t meticulous and calculating, the one that didn’t have to do everything perfectly and be right all the time. After all, as nice as _all_ those parts of him were, _this_ one was the reason Harry had fallen in love with him in the first place. 

The secret fragments of Tom that he hid from everyone so carefully that they had no idea it even existed. Harry liked to think, though he had no confirmation for it, that this was Tom in his most natural, most comfortable, state, and what he would be like all the time if his world had been different. Certainly, it was only now that his magic was properly unwinding. Uncurling itself fully until it at its smoothest, this great wallowing smoothness that stretched out across the room and was only interrupted by a remaining peppering of apprehensions. 

Tom shifted again, pressing himself against Harry, firmly enough that anyone would think he was trying to press right into him. Several times, he heard Tom’s knuckles crack as he clenched his hands, still keeping them down by his sides, though each of the fingers twitched repeatedly against Harry’s thigh, not deliberately touching him, but simply moving because they couldn’t stand to remain still. 

“Don’t you want it?” Harry murmured, his hand snaking back onto the nape of Tom’s neck, and digging up into his hairline, “because I _want_ to give it to you, Tom, I _really_ want to give it to you.” Tom swallowed again, harder than before. Harry couldn’t help but smile into the crook of his neck; fifteen minutes really could last a long time, when each minute was rung dry of potential. Harry kept smiling even as he began to mouth kisses between the lines of ink, following the speckles of a flush that were starting to bloom all over Tom’s skin. “I think you want that too,” he continued, trying to keep that sultry tone spread even across the words, “I think you want it _bad_ , don’t you?”

Before he could stop himself, Tom was nodding, his hands hooked around the seat of the chair and his neck tilted to the side, creases forming at the join. Pressed this close together, Harry could feel his every breathless inhale, and equally, his every exhausted exhale, but too, and perhaps more importantly, he could feel the seeping relaxation diffusing itself through Tom’s limbs. It slid through each artery like morphine might, turning Tom to a mesmerising putty.

This was what he had wanted. Tom’s full attention; all his awareness and all concentration kept just on him. Though it must have been a little split, half on his left hand that was buried in Tom’s hair, pulling his head back so that Harry could kiss along his neck and up his throat and into his mouth, and the other half on his right, that was palming slowly just below Tom’s belt buckle. And all the time, Tom was making these soft little sounds that slid off his tongue before he could stop them; they were barely there in the grand scheme of things but resonated so loudly in Harry’s ear. 

“Are you convinced yet, Tom?”

But before Tom could form a coherent answer, the moment was interrupted by the alarm of Tom’s clock sounding, and with it, Harry sliding off Tom and rather sitting back on the desk; the space endless between them. Tom groaned, his head tipped forward, and his stomach clenching, and this rose coloured flush dribbled down his neck, “that’s not fair,” he said, glancing up at Harry, whilst still all breathless and adorable with his hair in his eyes. 

Harry stayed where he was, swinging his legs and watching how Tom was glaring at him, half with frustration and half with desperation. “Oh, but Tom,” he said, unable to keep the smile off his face or teasing out of his tone, “who said anything about fairness?”


End file.
